Peace at long last

"You realize you'll stand out if you visit there, you know" I'd been told by previous travelers about this trip to southeast Asia. I expected to garner a few curious stares here, which I thought I was mentally prepared for. All of us are curious about curiosities, and I am indeed a curiosity here, a massively tall girl with weird short hair wearing funny butt-enlarging tight shorts. 

But I had no idea the staring would be this intense. It was apparent but short-lived in Thailand, but in the rural areas of Cambodia it is acute. I feel like I am absolutely being drilled into anytime I leave the guest house. My hair. My face. My body. My clothes. My sandals. Stared at when browsing food stalls. Followed around little shops as I read ingredients (there's only so much MSG I'm willing to knowingly ingest). Stared at while I'm eating (and this is especially intense because I am stationery and can thus draw a crowd). Waved at and hello'd repetitively while passing by.

Some of the "hello hello hello!" is simply outgoing and friendly, while other times it is like children tapping the glass of the aquarium and worrying the fish: you want to see that strange creature respond to you. This I do not appreciate.

I grew up in a culture where staring was thoroughly taboo; if there was someone funny looking you wanted to check out, you did so as discreetly as possible and satiated yourself with that.

I find myself exhausted and like a leaf wanting to close up while being out and about in Cambodia. It's just a sort of exposure, like sun burn. Stare burn. Call me overly sensitive, or simply call me human; I don't know, but it is certainly part of the experience here.

So, yesterday evening, when I wandered off the staring blaring street and under the arch of a temple complex, into sudden silence and relative emptiness, I felt extraordinarily expansive and grateful. There were a few others, tooling quietly around on bicycles or walking circuits around the pond but I received only one quiet "hello."  

I had a break from the drilling, in one of the most beautiful locations I'd been in for days. 

 

There is something delicious, truly delicious, to me about being all alone and not having felt this for weeks and now finally feeling it, in such a hallowed location, this was glorious. And the sun was setting, playing orange streamers on the clouds. And there was, relatively, little trash. And there were colorful and beautiful statues to wander amongst.

Here was the setting: